It's summer on the mountain and I can open my back windows on Sunday morning for the upbeat Episcopalians' early outdoor service on the next street over, the ecumenical endorsement of location location location. On their inaugural outside Sunday this year, I happened to be walking by (as opposed to eavesdropping through my windows while getting ready to join the indoor Presbyterians up the hill) just as the congregation was saying the prayer of confession I like the best. As I cruised by there was a wafting guided missle just for me:
" . . . we confess that we have sinned against You
in thought, word and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone . . . "
~~~~~
From the time I was in elementary school all the way up through college, every Thursday morning somewhere close to 8:00, Velma came through our door. She
alighted the city bus down the street and came to our house for a day spent making sense of everything therein. A woman of a nebulous age I never quite worked out, Velma arrived almost imperceptibly and quietly got busy in the exact same purposeful way every visit. She did busy work all morning and saved ironing for the afternoon so she would be in the perfect spot when
“the stories” came on television. Leaving a perfected house behind her, at the end of the day she gathered her things and slipped out the door, walking to the bus stop bench where she waited for the coach to take her home. Velma's comings and goings were magically subdued, just like the plain gray dress and understated wig she always wore.
Velma and I chatted every Thursday, with our visits working their way into weekly customs that stretched in pleasant sameness across all the weeks of the calendar. We spent years discussing the goings-on in her family, whatever big stories were making news headlines at the time, and we always circled back around to the poor choices made by those crazy people on One Life to Live. She was unassuming and kind with all sorts of practical wisdom; once when I had a sore spot on my finger she pronounced it “a rising” and advised me to sleep with bacon tied around it with string “to draw out the poison”. Sleeping with bacon was an intriguing idea I did not try, and I have often wondered how that might have worked out.
Velma lived three miles away behind the bread factory in a little home with a grassless yard. I remember some things about visiting her there: the neighborhood smelled really good when bread baking was going on, there always seemed to be an extraordinary number of people in that tiny house, and the focal point of Velma's living room was a wood-burning, pot-bellied stove.
As I moved up and out to college and work, Velma grew older and somewhere along the way didn't come to our house anymore. I was living in Atlanta so not close to the details, but I did hear she was troubled by diabetes and eventually blind. One day shortly after I began work as a Delta flight attendant and was back in town, I stopped by her place for a visit and found Velma sitting in a chair next to the living room stove, cane in hand and with dim eyes that could not see me. I was 24 years old but I can still go back to that visit now and recall the smell of her house and the heavy feel of the air. I especially remember Velma's parting thought as I was heading to the door: "Ellen, every time I hear an airplane up in the sky, I say a prayer because you might be on it."
My little story about visiting Velma with her surprising and most humbling words has lingered as a monument to all the things on which I can look back and know I was short of the mark in having done well. I was okay, but I could have been a whole lot better. While pretty much just a child when Velma was an every-week guest in our home, I am aware if I had just spent more time asking other thoughtful questions and being a better listener, I could have learned a great deal more about a kind, hard-working and interesting woman who was always right there in my midst.
During the work week I always wind up in the neighborhood where the bread factory, the little house behind it, and Velma all once had life. The sweet aroma of baking bread, the pot-bellied stove and Velma all left a long time ago, and I think about how nice it would be to see them back in their familiar places. Their absence is a perpetual reminder of things I left undone long ago. It took some years to figure out, but I now know everyone has a story to tell, and I should be the fortunate one to hear it. And I always say a prayer when an airplane passes overhead because I just might have a loved one on it.
As I moved up and out to college and work, Velma grew older and somewhere along the way didn't come to our house anymore. I was living in Atlanta so not close to the details, but I did hear she was troubled by diabetes and eventually blind. One day shortly after I began work as a Delta flight attendant and was back in town, I stopped by her place for a visit and found Velma sitting in a chair next to the living room stove, cane in hand and with dim eyes that could not see me. I was 24 years old but I can still go back to that visit now and recall the smell of her house and the heavy feel of the air. I especially remember Velma's parting thought as I was heading to the door: "Ellen, every time I hear an airplane up in the sky, I say a prayer because you might be on it."
My little story about visiting Velma with her surprising and most humbling words has lingered as a monument to all the things on which I can look back and know I was short of the mark in having done well. I was okay, but I could have been a whole lot better. While pretty much just a child when Velma was an every-week guest in our home, I am aware if I had just spent more time asking other thoughtful questions and being a better listener, I could have learned a great deal more about a kind, hard-working and interesting woman who was always right there in my midst.
During the work week I always wind up in the neighborhood where the bread factory, the little house behind it, and Velma all once had life. The sweet aroma of baking bread, the pot-bellied stove and Velma all left a long time ago, and I think about how nice it would be to see them back in their familiar places. Their absence is a perpetual reminder of things I left undone long ago. It took some years to figure out, but I now know everyone has a story to tell, and I should be the fortunate one to hear it. And I always say a prayer when an airplane passes overhead because I just might have a loved one on it.
